The
Chicago-based Certification Commission for Health Information Technology
(CCHIT), and the Drummond Group Inc. (DGI) of Austin, TX, were recently named
as the first official certifiers of EHR technology. Healthcare professionals
and their vendors can now begin to seek certification for EHR systems and technologies.
You must be using certified EHR technology to qualify for meaningful use
incentive payments.
Additional certifying bodies may still be named; in the
meantime, the industry can begin lining up to have EHRs tested and hopefully
certified in time for the first round of incentive payments, targeted for May
2011. Naming the bodies is one step, but actually certifying multiple vendors'
systems is another.
In the meantime, CMS is creating an online system for
providers to register and attest to meaningful use to qualify for the programs.
We will update this post when additional information comes out.